October 10, 2025 By: JK Tech
Every time we scroll past an ad or click “skip,” we’re making an emotional decision, maybe due to annoyance, lack of interest, or the tone just didn’t land. Marketing is perceived to be about keywords, demographics, or A/B tests. But what if the next campaign could sense moods, tone, desire, and speak directly to someone’s emotional state? The next frontier in marketing AI isn’t about better keywords. It’s about feeling.
From Keywords to Vibe Coding
For decades, marketers have built campaigns around keywords, SEO rules, demographic buckets. These are rational, predictable systems. But human attention isn’t always rational. The new wave of marketing AI proposes something bolder: vibe coding. Instead of targeting “budget smartphone buyers in L.A., age 25–35,” they target “people in that moment who feel aspirational, playful, or frustrated.” The underlying AI learns emotional contours in language, images, and behavior, not just what words people type, but how they feel.
This emotional layer is being engineered into real tools, promising campaigns that resonate deeper because they move past logic and reach mood.
Why Feeling Beats Formality
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Emotional Resonance Drives Action: Studies show people often decide with motivation and emotion first, then rationalize with logic. An ad that feels like it resonated with your mood can cut through the noise.
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Less Noise, More Relevance: Instead of trying to win every keyword auction, vibe-aware AI learns which messages will feel right and which will be ignored, pruning wasted spending.
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A Future of Adaptive Tone: One user might respond to bold, punchy language; another to calm, reassuring tone. A feeling-based AI can adapt tone, phrasing, and visual style in real time.
But it also raises big questions: how do you encode “feeling”? How do you validate that it isn’t manipulating or misreading? Who owns the emotional profile that AI builds about a person?
The Business Shift Underway
Forward-thinking brands are already experimenting. Some are layering emotional signals onto existing customer profiles (past purchase sentiment, review tone). Others are asking AI to generate creatives that match not just persona, but current vibe.
In B2B or B2C markets, tools are emerging that combine multimodal inputs (text + image + voice) to detect mood and context, and then generate ads aligned with those signals. Recent research in advertising AI is trending in this direction agentic Multimodal Advertising frameworks, for instance, adapt messages across media and consumer states.
At the same time, caution is growing. An academic study, “Towards Equitable AI: Detecting Bias in Using Large Language Models for Marketing”, shows that AI marketing systems can deliver subtly different emotional language depending on demographics, introducing ethical risks.
A New Rulebook for Marketers
What should leaders do now?
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Start layering emotional analytics on top of your standard metrics: Don’t discard keywords, but enrich them with tone, sentiment, and reaction.
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Test vibe-aware creative: Use small experiments to see how changing tone or emotional framing affects engagement.
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Build guardrails: Because emotional targeting can veer into manipulation, set boundaries: transparency, opt-out, respect for privacy.
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Culture matters: Creative teams must become emotionally literate (how words feel), not just technically smart.
Because soon enough, marketing won’t ask, “What keywords should we bid on?” The question will be, “How do we feel with our customers?”
